A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [544]
I asked Mrs. Tolliver about my erstwhile patient and her child, but she merely pressed her lips tight and shook her head, looking pinched and severe. The sheriff had been absent the night before; there had been no sound of his booming voice in the kitchen. And from the green-gilled looks of Maisie Tolliver herself, I diagnosed a long and solitary night with the gin bottle, followed by a fairly ghastly dawn.
“You’ll feel much better if you sit in the shade and sip . . . water,” I said. “Lots of water.” Tea or coffee would be better, but these substances were more costly than gold in the colony, and I doubted a sheriff’s wife would have any. “If you have any ipecacuanha . . . or perhaps some mint . . .”
“I thank you for your valuable opinion, Mrs. Fraser!” she snapped, though she swayed, rather, and her cheeks were pale and glossy with sweat.
I shrugged, and bent my attention to the task of levering a wad of sopping, steaming clothes from the filthy suds with a five-foot wooden laundry spoon, so worn with use that my sweaty hands slipped on the smooth wood.
We got the lot laboriously washed, rinsed, scaldingly wrung, and hung upon a line to dry, then sank gasping into the thin line of shade afforded by the side of the house, and took turns passing a tin dipper back and forth, gulping lukewarm water from the well bucket. Mrs. Tolliver, disregarding her elevated social position, sat down, too, very suddenly.
I turned to offer her the dipper, only to see her eyes roll back into her head. She didn’t so much fall as dissolve backward, subsiding slowly into a heap of damp, checked gingham.
“Is she dead?” Sadie Ferguson inquired with interest. She glanced to and fro, obviously estimating the chances of making a run for it.
“No. Bad hangover, possibly aggravated by a slight case of sunstroke.” I’d got hold of her pulse, which was light and fast, but quite steady. I was myself debating the wisdom of abandoning Mrs. Tolliver to the dangers of aspirating her own vomit and absconding, even barefoot and in my shift, but was forestalled by male voices coming round the corner of the house.
Two men—one was Tolliver’s constable, whom I’d seen briefly when Brown’s men had delivered me to the gaol. The other was a stranger, very well dressed, with silver coat buttons and a silk waistcoat, rather the worse for sweat stains. This gentleman, a heavyset sort of about forty, frowned at the scene of dissipation before him.
“Are these the prisoners?” he asked in tones of distaste.
“Aye, sir,” the constable said. “Leastwise, the two in their shifts is. ’Tother one’s the sheriff’s wife.”
Silver Buttons’s nostrils pinched in briefly in receipt of this intelligence, then flared.
“Which is the midwife?”
“That would be me,” I said, straightening up and trying for an air of dignity. “I am Mrs. Fraser.”
“Are you,” he said, his tone indicating that I might have said I was Queen Charlotte, for all it mattered to him. He looked me up and down in a disparaging fashion, shook his head, then turned to the sweating constable.
“What is she charged with?”
The constable, a rather dim young man, pursed his lips at this, looking dubiously back and forth between us.
“Ahh . . . well, one of ’em’s a forger,” he said, “and ’tother’s a murderess. But as to which bein’ which . . .”
“I’m the murderess,” Sadie said bravely, adding loyally, “She’s a very fine midwife!” I looked at her in surprise, but she shook her head slightly and compressed her lips, adjuring me to keep quiet.
“Oh. Hmm. All right, then. Have you a gown . . . madam?” At my nod, he said briefly, “Get dressed,” and turned to the constable, taking out a vast silk handkerchief from his pocket, with which to wipe his broad pink face. “I’ll take her, then. You’ll tell Mr. Tolliver.”
“I will, sir,” the constable assured him, more or less bowing and scraping. He glanced down at the unconscious form of Mrs. Tolliver, then frowned at Sadie.
“You, there. Take her inside and see to her. Hop!”
“Oh,